JOHN BEAL

ARCHIE BEAL

We’re under her orders, Johnny. See what
she says.

JOHN BEAL

You, you don’t really think she’ll come
here?

ARCHIE BEAL

Of course I do, and the best thing too. It’s
her show; she ought to come.

JOHN BEAL

But, but you don’t understand. She’s
just a young girl, A girl like Miss Miralda couldn’t
come out here over the pass and down these mountains,
she’d never stand it, and as for the chaperon
. . . You’ve never met Miss Miralda.

ARCHIE BEAL

No, Johnny. But the girl that was able to get
you to go from Bromley to this place can look after
herself.

JOHN BEAL

I don’t see what that’s got to do with
it. She was in trouble and I had to help her.

ARCHIE BEAL

Yes, and she’ll be in trouble all the way here
from Blackheath, and everyone will have to help her.

JOHN BEAL

What beats me is how you can have the very faintest
inkling of what she’s like without ever having
seen her and without my having spoken of her to you
for more than a minute.

ARCHIE BEAL

Well, Johnny, you’re not a romantic bird, you’re
not a traveller by nature, barring your one trip to
Eastbourne, and it was I that took you there.
And contrariwise, as they say in a book you’ve
never read, you’re a levelheaded business man
and a hardworking respectable stay-at-home. You
meet a girl in a train, and the next time I see you
you’re in a place that isn’t marked on
the map and telling it what gods it ought to worship
and what gods it ought to have agnosticism about.
Well, I say some girl.

JOHN BEAL

Well, I must say you make the most extraordinary
deductions, but it was awfully good of you to come,
and I ought to be grateful; and I am, too, I’m
awfully grateful; and I ought to let you talk all
the rot you like. Go ahead. You shall say
what you like and do what you like. It isn’t
many brothers that would do what you’ve done.

ARCHIE BEAL

O, that’s nothing. I like this country.
I’m glad I came. And if I can help you with
Hussein, why all the better.